A journey of finding primordial purity of thought,word and action within oneself.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

The hypocrisy of geopolitics

Remi Kanazi, an acclaimed poet, editor and activist was quoted as saying,
“A million dead Iraqis is collateral damage. A smashed window is terrorism. -- Love,
the West”. It is hard to discount it as poetic exaggeration in light of
the evidence which exists in favor of the statement.

In an academic study done by Einsensee and Stornberg in 2007 on how much
influential media was in inducing bias in the U.S. relief to natural disasters
over the last 5 decades, they show that newsworthy disasters are crowded out by
other news unless a certain threshold death ratio is met. For example, the
death ratio between a volcano and drought is 1:2395. It means that the US
network news covered one volcano death for every 2395 deaths through a drought.
All of us know well enough where the drought prone areas in the world are in
the last five decades. Also, the death ratio of coverage between Europe and
Africa was 1:45. Once again, a single European death was considered newsworthy
whereas it required at least 45 African to die to make it to the network news
and catch U.S media’s attention.

Iraq war was clearly a case of the imperial overreach that former US
senator William Fulbright once called the “arrogance of power”. After 10 years,
1 trillion $ of expenditure, the US leaves behind an Iraq that is neither
democratic or secure. Sadly enough, it has come at the cost of several civilian
lives. In an attempt to justify its investment and pursuit of democratic order
in the Middle East, U.S showed more path dependence to a bad decision than
sensitivity to loss of human lives in Iraq. Whereas the sensitivity to
terrorism post 9/11 through its home security processes and procedures cannot
be understated.

While it is understandable that the U.S government will go any extent to
protect the lives of its own citizens and the sovereignty of its state, it is
disheartening that it does not reciprocate the same fundamental value on
foreign soil. That is clearly at the core of Remi’s heartburn.

It is not just Iraq that has highlighted U.S or West’s hypocrisy in the
way it has pursued geopolitics. To cite another example, the end of war in Sri
Lanka against the Tamil Tigers by the army was met with little of the
celebratory tone that had marked some of the reporting of the death of Muammar
Qadaffi in October 2011. While there was immediate condemnation of tactics used
the Sri Lankan army and cries for war-crimes enquiries, there is little
condemnation of the last phase of conduct in Libya, by the same governments of
human-rights watchdogs.

It doesn’t require a political science or international affairs degree to
see clearly the contradiction in West’s position arising because of its direct
involvement in Libya versus its direct condemnation of local state endorsed war
in Sri Lanka. Even in the case of Libya, it is not hard to forget the years of
cozying up the same countries had done with Libya for its natural resources.

Many such examples highlight that there are different standards which
apply when you take on a superpower. What causes a lot of heart burn for
liberal voices like Remi who articulate the sentiments of their people is that
super powers and their allies seek to assert their standards and values as universal.

It has to be pointed out that the hypocrisy of the Western superpowers is
far from absolute and there have been many times where they have been willing
to face the mirror. For example, Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary at the
time, eventually took responsibility for American mistreatment of detainees at
Abu Ghraib in Iraq, calling it “inconsistent with the values of our nation”.

However, such candid reflection is few and far between. Certainly not
enough to silence the voice of those whose lives have been intervened by a war
endorsed by a coalition of super power and its allies.

A human life is worth the same level of rights, dignity and compassion
irrespective of the identity of nation state. It is time that the world raises
to this obvious moral order. And it is time that the West showed us the lead.

About Me

Indian by nationality, journeyman by choice, and will be something by destiny.I seek the most sought after question in human history - Who am I? And,hopefully in the process demystify some elements of the physical, and the metaphysical world around me.